


wild youth goes before my eyes

by VerdantMoth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Character Study, Flashbacks, Implied Winterhawk, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Metaphores, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, implied stucky - Freeform, like seriously, pov bucky, so many metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:00:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24030034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Winter looks down into the sea, and she is beautiful. She is angry and black, a swirling hole ready to swallow him
Relationships: (IMPLIED), James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	wild youth goes before my eyes

There isn’t a country on this planet that Winter hasn’t set foot on and left blanketed in blood. 

_ There are plenty Winter’s never even heard of. _

Now though, Winter has returned home. Home is a cold harbor, snow skidding across a raging sea, and Winter stands like an Eclipse above it. 

_ Sunlight, cracked and splintered through the bars and tarps of scaffolding. Winter used to climb as high as he dared.  _

Winter rocks forward some. Summer is nipping at his heels, hungry and playful. Summer is wheat fade and cornstarch blue. Summer is broken bow laughs. Summer chases, with no intent to catch.

_ Summer used to be sickly. Wheat fade was corn silk and cornstarch blue was ocean depths.  _

Winter frowns. He hates when this happens. When his before tries to gloss over his now. 

Winter looks down into the sea, and she is beautiful. She is angry and black, a swirling hole ready to swallow him. If he focuses, if he looks, if he screams, she splits down the middle like an old legend, and Winter can see the red carpet he has stitched for himself. 

_ Winter used to love the sea when she was white foam and salt in his lungs. When he actually felt the cold, and when the legend held the weight of eternity. Winter used to love Summer, but a different Summer. A child Summer. A different love, something that just burned in his chest, not in all the secret, storm damp parts of him that never did dry out. _

“Don’t,” Summer says below him now. There are no buildings here, no scaffolding. There are no men stinking of fish and no soot coating his hair, his cheeks, his lungs. 

“Don’t,” Summer laughs. But it’s all wrong. His voice doesn’t drop the end of the words, isn’t harsh enough to shave with.

Summer’s voice is a little lazy, a little slow. Summer’s voice is long summers and cicada’s singing. 

_ “Shuddup,” Winter used to say. “Shuddup, ya’ voice is killen’ me. Ima jump ‘cause of your singing.” _

Winter thinks if Summer sang now, he might not jump. “I will kill you,” Winter says. His voice surprises him. His voice is the gravel caught up in the wind. His voice drops into the rage of the Sea and is lost, lost, he is lost.

_ Winter had a voice once that got lost easy, but it was a gentle thing. A brooke crooning to the skies. Sea foam lapping against smooth green glass and bare toes. _

“You say that every time,” Summer sighs. He sighs it like a dream. Winter snorts. Only Summer could make death sound wistful. Like whipped cream and cherries, and red vinyl booths that don’t exist anymore. 

“You always say that,” Summer says again. Sad this time, hopeful. “But then you-”

_ “That’s what ya say, punk,” Fade Summer used to say. “That’s what ya say right before ya leap, and we both get soaked!” _

“How come you never believe me?” Winter demands. The sea, she’s angry at being ignored. She howls and screams and even in his thick leather boots, Winter’s toes are cold. Colder than he thinks is possible. Then again, he doesn’t know what “possible” even means these days. Only that the tide is getting higher, is licking and kissing up his ankles, his calves, and soon he’ll have to choose.

_ “C’mon, just this once, don’t jump. Don’t get us in trouble,” Summer used to plead. He was so small, standing next to the waves. Beautiful. A study in contrast. Deep blue peace and soft yellow rage. _

“Maybe I’m just hopin’” Summer answers.

It stops Winter. Stops him… not cold. Stops him warm? Jesus, there’s a fire in his chest that hurts. 

“Hopin’ for what?” Winter demands, his winds cutting the shoulders of Summer. Claws dig like ice into scarred wrist and knobby knuckles.

“That you’ll come in from the storm,” Summer tells him.

_ “Come home, come inside,” Summer used to tease. Tease, with rosy lips and flushed cheeks and eyes as wild as the busy harbor. _

“And if I don’t?” Winter asks. Winter sways, because Spring is coming, paving her way for Summer. Spring is electric pain and whip sharp commands.

“Then I’ll jump with you, like I always do. I’ll find you again, and again, and again. I’ll be waiting, when the tide brings you back.”

_ “End of the line,” Summer once said. But that Summer was a liar. That Summer caved to an ice not even Winter could touch. Now a new Summer haunts Winter. _

Winter kisses the knuckles, traces the lines of calluses on the palms. “Maybe the next tide’ll wash something better in,” he says. He pushes Summer away from the cliffs edge, into the arms of the Red Dahlia Spring, and he falls. 

_ A scaffold _ , a cliff edge,  _ soot and fish _ , nothing but ice and gunpowder.  _ A boy who would die _ , a man who’d live for him. 

Winter is falling, winter is cradled in the sea’s waves.

_ Winter splashes back to shore, the rocks a harsh embrace. Summer waits with a scowl, a blanket, thick bread still warm and fresh stolen. _

Winter chokes on the black, slushy water. He can see Summer at the surface. He reaches blindly, confused.

The bank is a thick blanket of soft furs and a voice too soft for the streets of his youth.

_ Winter has a whole world to explore, and no place to call home. _

Winter finds home in the shape of his name on the lips of an archer, blue as the fire thawing his heart.

_ Summer calls him “Punk,” calls him “James,” calls him “Assshole.” _

Summer says, “You’re okay, Bucky.”

Spring says, “You don’t have to be the asset anymore.

Summer and Spring cradle him on either side, and they hadn him the knife, and they say, “It’s your choice. It’s always your choice.”

Bucky says, “I want to go home.”

The waves come, and they want to take him back.  _ Back to the ice, to the black, to the red sticked road he made for himself. _ Clint says he doesn;t have to jump, that the waves are small. Natalia says there is no foam choking him, no current ready to sweep him away.

_ Steve says, “You can be anything, everything.” _

Clint says, Natalia says, “You don't have to do or be what anyone else says. You can be nothing, if that’s what you want.

Bucky thinks they are all wrong. He’s still out there, adrift. Caught between everything and nothing, just waiting for the next wave to take him under.

But at least he’s found a lighthouse, an anchor, some kind of tether to the shore.


End file.
